[Fish]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

Yes. Exactly.

In California now, you have to have the nutritional content posted and the calories and fat listed next to the menu item.

So you walk into a TOGO's or Taco Bell, and it says "Chicken Caesar Panini - 1120 cal, 36g fat" or "Crunchwrap Supreme - 920 cal, 26 g."

And guess what?

I've walked into those places, read the board, and then walked out and gone somewhere else to get something healthy.

Therefore, based on my personal experience and not your hypothetical projections, I can say with 100% certainty...




It ****ing works.

Except that exact thing has been done already, and the results showed that requiring food joints to post caloric info had absolutely no effect on obesity rates. Multiple studies have been done, showing what you're claiming is completely ineffective.

The hope is that posting calorie counts at chain restaurants—defined broadly to include Taco Bell, Applebee's, and Starbucks—will lead people to order healthier food for themselves and their children.

There's a kind of logic to this. Restaurant calories are big contributors to the obesity epidemic. Americans blow nearly half their food budget at restaurants and spend less than half the time cooking at home than they did 50 years ago. If people only knew how many calories were in that Applebee's cheeseburger (930, plus 400 more for the fries), surely they'd order something lighter. This common-sense assumption drives the public health community's full-throated support for posting calorie counts, and explains why, to name one example, the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls the new measure a "huge victory." Even the restaurant industry heaps praise: It "gives consumers one more way to live a healthy lifestyle."

Requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts won't put a dent in the nation's obesity rates.

The trouble? Posting calorie counts won't help. We know because New York City has done it. Since 2008, chain restaurants in the city have had to post calorie information. In two studies, researchers at New York University compared the food choices of low-income children and adults from Newark, N.J. (where calories aren't posted) to the food choices of low-income New Yorkers. Although posting calorie counts raised consumer awareness somewhat, the researchers found that the measure had virtually no effect on what the New Yorkers actually purchased. Most distressingly, kids in New York were still eating as many calories as before. A third study looking at New York City and a fourth out of Seattle likewise found that little good came of posting calorie counts.

The ineffectiveness of similar regulations tells the same story. Since the mid-1990s, we've made food manufacturers print nutrition information, including calorie counts, on packaged foods. Time and again, however, studies show that few people notice nutritional information and even fewer use it effectively. As the FDA lamented in a 2004 report, "It may be that consumers do not take advantage of the available information on the food label to control their weight, perhaps because they do not appreciate how the information could be used for weight management purposes or perhaps because they find it too hard to apply the available information to such purposes."

http://hive.slate.com/hive/time-to-t.../whos-counting